France mourns third anniversary of Charlie Hebdo attack

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The third anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo massacre has seen a somber and low-key ceremony in Paris – President Emmanuel Macron attended a memorial at the site of the satirical weekly newspaper’ former offices in central Paris, along with several government ministers, but, at the request of the families of the victims, did not make a speech

After leaving flowers and reciting the names of the dead, the group sang the French national anthem.

Three years ago, on Jan. 7, 2015, two Islamist gunmen burst into the Charlie Hebdo offices and killed 11 people.

The following day, an accomplice of the attackers shot a policewoman dead before taking shoppers at a kosher supermarket hostage, killing four of them.

French President Emmanuel Macron observes a minute of silence in front of the plaque commemorating late police officer Ahmed Merabet to mark the third anniversary of the attack, in Paris, on January 7, 2018. /AFP Photo

It was the beginning of a series of terror attacks in France that have since left more than 200 people dead.

But it also sparked an outpouring of support from the French public – when almost four million people marched through Paris in support of the satirical magazine, and millions around the world used social networks to declare that Je Suis Charlie. The paper, which was previously teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, saw sales go through the roof.

That spirit of defiance is still very much in evidence now, both from the French public, who are proud of the way that their daily lives have been very little changed by terrorism, and from the magazine’ cartoonists, who remain as irreverent as ever.

But the magazine is now struggling – its revenue fell to 19.4 million euros in 2016, from more than 60 million in 2015.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo attend a ceremony outside the Hyper Casher supermarket as France pays tribute to the shoppers at the kosher store who were killed three years ago by an Islamist gunman in Paris, France January 7, 2018. /Reuters Photo

On Saturday, a number of events around Paris called for more public defenses of free speech, amid concerns that the collective spirit of January 2015 has been lost, and a recent poll shows that only 61 per cent of the French identify with the sentiment of “being Charlie” – ten percent less than a year ago.

Charlie Hebdo was always a controversial publication – its raison d’être has always been to see how far it could push the boundaries of taste, which led it to publish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that drew widespread opposition from Muslim groups even before the attack – and its editorial line has not changed.

Its anniversary edition, published on Wednesday, shows one of its cartoonists peering out from inside a tin can, in a reference to the intense security its writers have been under since the attack.

AFP Photo

Many of them are required to have 24-hour police protection, and about half the magazine’s profit from sales goes purely towards financing the private security they have been forced to employ – but the editors say that despite living with daily threats, they feel their work is more necessary than ever.

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